Coca-Cola Enterprises, established in 1986, is a young company by the standards of the CocaCola system.

Yet each of its franchises has a strong heritage in the traditions of Coca-Cola that is the foundation for this Company. The Coca-Cola Company traces its beginning to 1886, when an Atlanta pharmacist, Dr. John Pemberton, began to produce Coca-Cola syrup for sale in fountain drinks. However the bottling business began in 1899 when two Chattanooga businessmen, Benjamin F. Thomas and Joseph B. Whitehead, secured the exclusive rights to bottle and sell Coca-Cola for most of the United States from The Coca-Cola Company. The Coca-Cola bottling system continued to operate as independent, local businesses until the early 1980s when bottling franchises began to consolidate. In 1986, The Coca-Cola Company merged some of its company-owned operations with two large ownership groups that were for sale, the John T. Lupton franchises and BCI Holding Corporation's bottling holdings, to form Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc. The Company offered its stock to the public on November 21, 1986, at a split-adjusted price of $5.50 a share. On an annual basis, total unit case sales were 880,000 in 1986. In December 1991, a merger between Coca-Cola Enterprises and the Johnston Coca-Cola Bottling Group, Inc. (Johnston) created a larger, stronger Company, again helping accelerate bottler consolidation. As part of the merger, the senior management team of Johnston assumed responsibility for managing the Company, and began a dramatic, successful restructuring in 1992.Unit case sales had climbed to 1.4 billion, and total revenues were $5 billion.